


Kare o kaeshite (he was never yours to take)

by stereden



Series: Klabautermänner tales [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Ace Lives, Ace is an idiot but she loves him anyway, Denial-Land is a very nice place, Gen, I am still firmly in Denial thank you very much, Klabautermann, Klabautermänner feels, Marineford, Marineford AU, but Spadille even more than most, in her defense have you seen what she has to deal with?, in memoriam: ace, klabautermänner swear a lot, mostly because I refuse to consider the alternative, possessive klabautermann, protective klabautermann, side story to We Still Stand Proud, written for the In Memoriam: A Portgas D. Ace Event
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22801303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereden/pseuds/stereden
Summary: Her people are getting ready to fight, they're just waiting for the Old Hag to show up now, and Spadille chaffes at having to wait, but even she can grudgingly admit that there's a fucking lot of marines standing between her and her captain, and that some additional muscle will be appreciated, but her fireboy is on a fucking execution platform and these swords are way too close to him and she wants him back right this fucking second , and if the Old Hag isn't there in two minutes Spadille won't be held responsible for what she does, but she will take the credit for the fucking bloodbath that will result of it.Just fucking watch her.
Relationships: Piece of Spadille & Portgas D. Ace, Spade Pirates & Piece of Spadille, Spade Pirates & Portgas D. Ace
Series: Klabautermänner tales [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1639180
Comments: 37
Kudos: 494
Collections: In Memoriam: A Portgas D. Ace Collection





	Kare o kaeshite (he was never yours to take)

**Author's Note:**

> Because I couldn't NOT take part in a In Memoriam: Portgas D. Ace event when I am STILL not over his death in canon.
> 
> So this work firmly belongs to the Event's second category: Denial-Land: for those works that chose to ignore the above category, and bring us a world in which Ace lived past Marineford.
> 
> I also gleefully point the finger at my discord group for being fabulous enablers and giving me Klabautermänner feels. This story is going to be part of a series, focusing on the various ships in One Piece and on their Klabautermänner.
> 
> Anyway, there you go, have over 3.000 words of the Piece of Spadille being fucking done with Marineford and wanting her captain back ASAP! I hope you'll enjoy it!

_Oh, seht ihn an, oh, seht ihn an:  
Dort zeigt sich der Klabautermann!  
Doch wenn der letzte Mast auch bricht,  
wir fürchten uns nicht! _

_(Oh look at him, oh look at him:  
There comes the Klabautermann !  
But even if the last mast breaks,  
we are not afraid!) _

_(Das kann doch einen Seemann nicht erschüttern!)_

* * *

Spadille is _seething_ as she sails herself to Marineford, her crew preparing for _war_ inside her.

Most of her crew. Not all of them, and that's why she's fucking _furious_.

King has only been away for a couple of days, and that's because they infiltrated the place to preemptively get rid of as many opponents as they can, which is a _good thing_ but doesn't make Spadille any less antsy about their whereabouts because it's _King_ and they can find trouble in a paper bag most days, but at least she knows they're there of their own volition, and that they should be mostly okay. Plus they're getting a headstart on their crew's vengeance, which she _might_ be slightly jealous about. Might.

(Fuck her captain’s captain for having to be _logical_ and pointing out that she needed to be recoated before she could get back to Paradise. As soon as they get their captain back, she's dragging Six to the closest coater and they're _both_ going to learn how to do it themselves.)

Anyway, she's not _too_ worried about King, but they're not the only one missing from her deck of cards, and her captain's situation is the reason they're fucking heading to _war_ in the first place.

It's not that she's not used to not having her captain on board every single day, because ever since that captain-stealing Old Hag had gotten her sails on her captain, Spadille has had to _share_ him, which she will _nev_ er be happy about, because he was hers first damn it, but at least she had gotten him _back_ , which hadn't been a certainty for those first hundred days or so. Even if the really fucking tall captain had decided that her captain was one of his kids now, and the Old Hag had decided that it meant that her captain was now her _grandkid_ , which, what the _hell_ , and from then on Ace had alternated between the Old Hag and Spadille, depending on when the Second Division was patrolling and when they were hanging out with the main group.

At least no one had tried to say that her captain should just take over the previous division head's flag ship, or she might have sunk all of those assholes in retaliation.

But at least he had still been _there_ , even if not always on her deck, but then that fucking backstabber had killed the Fourth Division Commander that had been her captain's best friend, and Spadille had been all riled up to go and sink him, because Thatch had been her captain's best friend and Spadille actually tolerated the _Cuisine_ and as such had been offended on her behalf for the way her captain had been killed, but then her fire boy had to go and be fucking _stupid_ and had left _alone_ . On that little skiff of his that wasn't even truly _alive_ yet because it was too _young_ , too inexperienced to be able to back him up, and Spadille had been _furious_ when she had realised he was gone, and even more furious when her captain's captain had stopped them from following him.

This is the last fucking time she's letting anyone other than her captain order her and hers around, because if they had listened to her they wouldn't be in this clusterfuck to start with!

The backstabbing landlubber undeserving of the pirate name had somehow gotten the better of her captain, had fucking _destroyed_ the Striker, destroyed it before it could truly _become_ , and now they're sailing to _war_ because some soon to be dead and _drowned_ marines had decided to execute her captain for some really shitty reasons. 

Really, who the fuck blames the ship for the shipwright's actions? What kind of bullshit is _that_?

Basically, Spadille is _fucking furious_ and she's going to fucking _sink_ whoever tries to stop her from saving her captain.

* * *

Her people are getting ready to fight, they're just waiting for the Old Hag to show up now, and Spadille chaffes at having to wait, but even she can grudgingly admit that there's a fucking lot of marines standing between her and her captain, and that some additional muscle will be appreciated, but her fireboy is on a fucking execution platform and these swords are way too close to him and she wants him back _right this fucking second_ , and if the Old Hag isn't there in two minutes Spadille won't be held responsible for what she does, but she _will_ take the credit for the fucking _bloodbath_ that will result of it.

Just fucking _watch her_.

* * *

And then, just when she thinks that the old hag is _finally_ showing up, the fucking _Oro Jackson_ of all ships shows up, and Spadille _stares._

The Oro Jackson is a fucking _legend,_ okay? She's the ship who made it to the end of the world and _back,_ who survived the fucking Edd War without so much as _scratch_ , who went all the way to the sky and then all the way down to the bottom of the ocean, and who didn't lose a single member of her crew while doing so, and that's fucking _amazing_ because the New World is fucking _insane_ and the Oro's captain was a _D_ , and, listen, Spadille fucking _loves_ her captain, but he's a fucking D as well, and she knows exactly how fucking hard it is to keep one of _these_ alive, okay? So for the Oro to manage to that while the whole fucking world was gunning for her crew was really fucking _impressive_ . Every ship in the world wants to be like the Oro in her prime when they start out, because she's _that_ much of a legend.

…

She doesn't look too good, though, not right now, even though it's not obvious if you're only looking at her frame. Oh, don't get Spadille wrong, she's still really fucking impressive, but there's something… something not quite _broken_ but still very _wrong_. 

…

Well, of fucking course there is. Because for all that the Oro had kept her captain and her crew alive through their journeys, that hadn't been enough in the end, had it? Her idiot captain had gone and left his crew, and then gotten himself captured and executed, just like they're trying to do with Spadille's captain, and then Oro's crew had _disbanded_ and she had been left _alone and unsailed_ for the past two decades and that's fucking _terrible_ , and Spadille _refuses_ to let something like that happen to her captain and to her crew, she will _not_ let that happen, and fuck anyone standing in her fucking way!

She is _not_ ending up like the Oro. She is _not_ . Because for all that the Oro still _looks_ fucking badass and is no doubt ready to throw down, she feels _hollow_ , _empty, lonely_ , and while her Klabautermann form is not visible _yet,_ Spadille has no doubt that it would look like _shit_ . Twenty years without her crew, twenty years _hidden away_ , her crew scattered and her captain _dead_ , and the fact that she hasn't sunk despite all of that is a fucking _miracle_.

The Oro Jackson is so fucking badass it’s _unreal_ , but Spadille is _not_ going to end up like her. She’s going to be just as badass, sure, but she’s going to keep her fucking idiot of a captain, and her dumbass crew, because they might be morons sometimes, all of them, but they are _her_ morons, and she’s not letting anyone take them away from her, not even their own fucking bad decisions. She’ll simply kidnap them and not let them go if they try to fucking leave without her say-so.

* * *

And then the Old Hag _finally_ shows up, there's some more talking which Spadille can't be fucking bothered to listen to until _another_ old timer shows up, and it takes her slightly longer to recognise this one, but that's mostly because of whatever had been keeping her hidden until now, not because Spadille hasn’t actually heard of her before.

The Black Maria is not as well known as the Oro Jackson, not a legend in the same way, but she's still really fucking badass, built for speed and manoeuvrability more than sheer brute force, though she does sport quite a number of _very_ shiny cannons on both of her flanks, and she has that terrifyingly competent and competently terrifying air about her that means 'do not fucking mess with me', and, from what Spadille understands, the Maria lost her captain twenty years ago too, and her captain had been Spadille's captain other shipwright along with the Oro's captain, but the Maria looks heaps better than the Oro, feels _stronger_ , too, despite the fact that most of her crew is currently on Marineford and not on her deck, and that means that her crew stayed _together_ , withstood the loss of their captain _together_ , and yeah there's still _clearly_ a missing piece there, but the wound's been patched over properly, not left to rot like it was with the Oro Jackson.

That says _a lot_ about their different crews, and if Spadille _has_ to share her captain with one of them, she knows which one she would rather do it with.

(Not that she actually _wants_ to share her captain with _either of them_ , let’s be fucking clear, she’s still pissed off that she has to share him with the old hag, but she knows her captain wants to learn more about his shipwright - no, the human term is mother, right, about his _mother,_ so she will… urgh… play _nice_.)

(Just for him.)

(Just this once.)

(Because he's had a shitty couple of months and deserves good things.)

But first, she has to get him _back_.

* * *

She swerves to avoid getting caught in the suddenly appearing ice, and then most of her crew is rushing out to fight, leaving only Six, Seven and Ten, one to man the cannons, one to be ready to patch the others up if necessary - and Spadille doesn’t kid herself, it’s _her_ crew, of fucking course someone is going to need patching up, starting with her dumbass captain who feels _terrible -_ and one to snipe from a distance, and Spadille is so fucking furious about this whole situation that just helping Six with the cannons is not enough, she has to do _more_ and insulting the Marine ships isn’t nearly enough either, but it’s fucking _something_.

Doesn’t stop her from doing it, though, because fuck all of them for trying to take her captain from her.

“You starvelling, you eel-skin, you dried neat's-tongue, you bull's-pizzle, you stock-fish, you tailor's-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck!” She screams as she moves her hull to give Six a better angle to shoot from. “You should have sunk yourselves as soon as you left the workshop, you sorry excuses for ships!”

A ship falls from the sky and her captain is yelling even more than he was before, and apparently the rubber brat that fell from the sky is her captain’s brother?

Somehow, she can’t even bring herself to be surprised. 

He’s her captain’s brother, and another fucking D on top of that. Of fucking course he’s just as nuts as her captain. She kind of wants to meet his ship, because they’re bound to be an interesting one.

* * *

That’s when her captain’s captain gets stabbed by one of their own, one that the Marines have _twisted_ , have messed up until he turned _traitor_ , and that’s so many shades of fucked up, Spadille can’t even.

She is so fucking tempted to manifest herself and march down that battlefield to show those fucking marines just why you do _not_ fucking mess with her people, but she can’t afford to, not when the battle is also taking place on the water, not when she might need her energy later.

And then she’s fucking glad she didn’t, because the fucker with the lava fruit starts targeting the ships and Spadille has to give _everything_ to dodge, and then suddenly the Old Hag is _burning_ and _sinking_ and Spadille sees _red_.

She’s the only allowed to fuck with the Old Hag, how _dare_ that asshole target the fucking Moby Dick?

All around her, the other Whitebeard pirates are _screaming_ as their ship goes down, and Spadille is _screaming_ too, because she can _hear her_ , can hear the Old Hag shouting in pain and in defiance, her Klabautermann form manifesting as she gives _everything_ she has to keep afloat long enough to give those still on her deck the chance to escape.

Ten’s rifle hasn’t stopped _once_ , and Six is throwing Haki-infused cannonball after Haki-infused cannonball at the shipkiller, but it’s too late, too late to save the Moby Dick, and all Spadille can do, all _all_ of the Whitebeard affiliated ships can do, is watch as she goes down, burning and breaking, but not one moment before all every single soul aboard her manages to get away.

And fuck, but Spadille couldn’t fucking _stand_ the Old Hag, but she didn’t deserve that, didn’t fucking deserve that kind of death, and if she could afford it Spadille would be killing that fucker right fucking _now_ , but she _can’t_ , because they’re going to _kill her captain_ and she is too far away, too far away to do anything, but the sand guy who tried to kill her captain’s captain earlier intervenes, and she hates that she has to be grateful to that asshole but her fireboy is _alive_ and that’s all that matters.

Her captain’s other nakama are trying their best to get to him, and so is her captain’s brother, except that that one is already way too injured for her taste - not that she actually _likes_ the brat, she doesn’t even know him, but her captain loves him and is freaking out for him, so she’s rooting for the brat to survive - and her captain’s captain is trying too, but then he _stops_ , and there’s blood when he coughs and the lava asshole is going for the kill, and no, please please please no, that’s going to fuck her captain up so much, he can’t lose that old man, he _can’t_ -

And then there’s a _wrench_ of all things hitting the asshole in the fucking face and he goes _down,_ and Spadille _cheers_ with the rest of the Whitebeard pirates and allies, especially when the one who threw the wrench says she did it for the Moby Dick.

That’s the kind of thing Spadille can approve of.

* * *

(The Old Hag is nearly completely gone, but suddenly there’s a yell at the edge of Spadille’s hearing, ships yelling to each other as Namur, the Commander of the Eight Division, resurfaces, clutching a translucent figure, a flag and a piece of wood tightly to his chest.)

(She’s a _mess_ , broken and battered and burned, but she’s _stubborn_ , and so’s her crew, and that’s what’s holding the Old Hag together right now, stubbornness and pride and love and _spite_ , a refusal to die on any terms but her own, and Namur hoists her on his own Division’s flagship, has his shipwrights abscond with her to their workshop, and for all that Spadille has _loathed_ having to share her captain with her, she’s so fucking _glad_ that the Old Hag made it.)

* * *

And then the Old Hag’s captain decides to be a fucking moron and tries to sacrifice himself to help the others get away, which is fucking _dumb_ because it’s like the old fucker doesn’t realises just how badly this will affect her captain, and anything that fucks up her fireboy is _not fucking allowed_ , especially not when there are _fucking swords bearing down on her boy no no nonononononononooooo -_

Thank fuck for her captain’s idiot of a brother. The brat might be on Davy Jones’ doorstep, but he’s very much a D and not letting that stop him. He gets knocked out by the Oro’s doctor after that, but he did manage to save her captain’s life long enough for the First Division Commander to get to him, and though it takes them a while, her captain is _finally_ free, and then he’s _flying_ and he’s so fucking close, he’s _nearly_ there, nearly on her deck, but then there’s a ray of light that pierces the Phoenix’s flank, and they’re _crashing_ and her captain’s brother is suddenly _awake_ and rushing towards her captain and then he collapses too, and the magma asshole is _right there_ , and her crew is rushing but they’re going to be too late, and she’s switching into her humanoid form before she even realises, for the first time in her entire existence she is _corporeal_ , but it’s still not _enough,_ she still can’t leave her ship, still can’t do anything but grab a cannon next to Six and try and hit the fucker with all she has, and it _hurts_.

And then someone is _there_ , standing between her captain and certain death, and Spadille can barely hear what he says, too focused on her captain, on her fireboy still curled around his little brother, but she _does_ notice when her captain’s saviour fucking _ends_ the magma asshole, and she’s not the only one cheering when the dead bastard hits the ground. At least she’s not the only _ship_ , all the humans seem too shell shocked to react, but it’s not like she gives a fuck about them, especially not once the Phoenix drop her captain and her captain’s brother on her deck.

He is _back_ , her captain is back on her deck, back where he belongs, with her, with their crew, and he's _alive, alive alive alive-_

Spadille shoots down three more ships to celebrate, and then she leaves the cannon be and goes to check on her idiot captain.

* * *

Her fireboy’s brother is mostly out of it, but her captain is very much _not_ , and Seven wastes no time grabbing him in a tight hug before looking him over, ignoring the way he tries to push him towards his brother, and when her boy makes it an _order,_ the glare Seven gives him is enough to make him wince, even if the doctor reluctantly agrees that the younger boy definitely needs medical attention.

Six is still firing cannons at whoever so much as _looks_ at them, and Ten has not stopped firing either, and she _knows_ her idiot captain is going to try and go back to the fight as soon as Seven’s back is turned, and Spadille is not going to let that happen, she’s _not_. She’s so fucking done with today already, she just want to grab her fireboy and fucking leave already. She knows he’s not going to let her do that, though, so she settles for stalking towards her idiot captain and grabbing him in a bear hug as soon as Seven lets him go.

* * *

“You are not going anywhere without me ever fucking again, do you hear me idiot captain?” She yells in his ear even as she slips one of her chains around the belt loop of his shorts, literally anchoring herself to him. Let him try and get away from her now!

“W...what? Who… Spadille?!” Her boy yelps, and he _recognises her_ , it’s the first time she’s taken a corporeal form and he _recognises her immediately_ and that warms her whole hull. “What…”

“You are not going anywhere without a fucking escort for the rest of your fucking life, you hear me idiot captain?” She rants, and maybe there’s angry tears running down her cheeks but she’ll never fucking admit it. “Never fucking again!”

Her idiot captain hesitates, doesn’t quite know how to react, and then, slowly, carefully, he lifts his arms and wraps them around her, hugging her back, and Spadille closes her eyes and keeps him close, feels the beat of his heart against her frame, and thinks _alive_.

He’s _alive_ , and so is she, and so is her entire fucking crew, and that’s all that matters right now.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought of this little story! Other Klabautermänner stories are coming, when exactly I don't know, but they are coming I swear!
> 
> Again, special thanks to the rest of the Discord people: you are enablers and I adore you for it.
> 
> Special Special thanks to Tier for making amazing Klabautermänner art!! You can find their take on the Spadille on my Tumblr !
> 
> If you want to join the discord group: https :// discord .gg /xre VUA2 (just take out the spaces)
> 
> Feel free to join it if you want to yell at me for giving you feels about Buggy the Clown or about Klabautermänner, if you want to throw headcanons and plotbunnies around and see what sticks, or if you want to discuss latest chapters and share your own writing/art or favourite fics/art!


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